By Edward Nawotka Russia is taking several star turns at book fairs as “guest of honor” — first in London earlier this month and next year at BookExpo America. The country’s literary reputation overseas is largely based on classic texts and a handful of translated authors who have broken through — Boris Akunin, Viktor Pelevin, Tatyana Tolstaya, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, and Lyudmila Ulitskaya …

Russian novelist Grigory Chkhartishvili, a.k.a. Boris Akunin, is an international publishing phenomenon. A scholar of Japanese language and culture, and a former literary translator, he wrote his first novel, The White Queen — starring the now famous literary detective Erast Fandorin — at the age of 40. In the 13 years since its publication, Akunin has sold tens of millions …

What’s at stake is not just the financial cost, but the very authorship of audiobooks. By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story looks at the growing market for audiobooks in Germany. As the story notes, as long as people continue to pay for what they listen to this is a positive development. But digital audiobooks are just as vulnerable to piracy …